What i am trying to do is set up a drum rack to trigger midi chords so that i can play chords through a soft synth on a drum pad. Aiming so that i can layer up a few different synths such as you would in an instrument rack. So ideally what i want to do is route the midi coming out of a drum rack into an instrument rack.

So.....

What i have done so far is set up a drum rack with separate instances of the chord device so each one plays a different chord, then i had to get that midi information out to a soft synth, i managed to use the external instrument device to route each instance out to a second track. I put kontakt on it, and bang! i was playing full chords on a piano....BUT.....My problem came about when i realised i was using Kontakt, the external instrument device only seems to recognise kontakt, does not allow me to route to anything else, or even just a track as a whole. Humph.

This is a driver that creates virtual midi ports so that you can send midi to different software on one pc. You can also use it to send midi to the same software. I sometimes use this to send midi from drum racks to trigger bass sounds. You can create a few ports and name them how you want.

There is a way to do this on mac, it's built in to the o/s but I don't know how to do it.

A drum rack is an instrument, i.e. MIDI in, audio out. Also instrument racks are "midi in, audio out" devices. So no midi out routing is possible.

Possible solutions:
1) For each chord use one MIDI track. Filter MIDI note using pitch midi fx, i.e. only one note = one pad comes through. Set chord. Arm each of these tracks.
In each track set the midi out to the track with your soft synth and the device. On the softsynth track set input to off. (it is possible that this can be done more elegant, but this works at least)

2) Have one clip for each chord. Makes it necessary to midi map your drum pads to the clips (depending on your device or how you can launch the clips).
routing the midi data to another midi channel makes it possible to record the midi data.

P.S.:
With the m4l MIDI sender/receiver it is possible to solve this using only one drum rack.

If the number of chords isn't too high, you could also use one drum rack and have in each cell the same synth. But the editing of the synth sound isn't too comfortable. Mapping the macros makes it easier. (mapping macros first and copy the synth keeps the same mapping for the duplicated device btw)

Within the rack, set up all the appropriate chord parameters using chord devices and midi racks or something.

Also, within that rack, 'limit' the notes which it can receive to be the notes on your drum device.

Place that rack into one drum rack slot. For that slot, instead of setting the input to a specific note, change it to 'receive all notes'.

The plus of this is, you'll have all the standard drum rack options like scrolling and step sequencing.

The downside of this is, only the drum rack slot Hosting the device will appear to be active. Also, if you needed to control parameters on that synth, you'd be stuck tapping that pad first (if you are using blue hand control).

Within the rack, set up all the appropriate chord parameters using chord devices and midi racks or something.

Also, within that rack, 'limit' the notes which it can receive to be the notes on your drum device.

Place that rack into one drum rack slot. For that slot, instead of setting the input to a specific note, change it to 'receive all notes'.

The plus of this is, you'll have all the standard drum rack options like scrolling and step sequencing.

The downside of this is, only the drum rack slot Hosting the device will appear to be active. Also, if you needed to control parameters on that synth, you'd be stuck tapping that pad first (if you are using blue hand control).

Which pad controlled are you using?

I don't understand this.

Using an instrument rack means, we have one chain for each chord. Thus, we need one softsynth in each chain.

Using layered devices in one drum pad also means, we would need one softsynth in each cell.

OK, I was really confused and curious about this because I was also trying similar things.

The solution is to take one MIDI Effect Rack. In each chain define the desired chord. Filtering the incoming notes in each chain either by the key zones from the rack, or within the chain using midi fx like pitch or whatever.

After this chord generator you can have one softsynth or whatever is needed to generate audio from the midi data.

This is a really simple solution. Interesting that we all seem to think so complicated.

Within the rack, set up all the appropriate chord parameters using chord devices and midi racks or something.

Also, within that rack, 'limit' the notes which it can receive to be the notes on your drum device.

Place that rack into one drum rack slot. For that slot, instead of setting the input to a specific note, change it to 'receive all notes'.

The plus of this is, you'll have all the standard drum rack options like scrolling and step sequencing.

The downside of this is, only the drum rack slot Hosting the device will appear to be active. Also, if you needed to control parameters on that synth, you'd be stuck tapping that pad first (if you are using blue hand control).

Within the rack, set up all the appropriate chord parameters using chord devices and midi racks or something.

Also, within that rack, 'limit' the notes which it can receive to be the notes on your drum device.

Place that rack into one drum rack slot. For that slot, instead of setting the input to a specific note, change it to 'receive all notes'.

The plus of this is, you'll have all the standard drum rack options like scrolling and step sequencing.

The downside of this is, only the drum rack slot Hosting the device will appear to be active. Also, if you needed to control parameters on that synth, you'd be stuck tapping that pad first (if you are using blue hand control).

Which pad controlled are you using?

This. MidiRack+Pitch+Chord

Yes! These two together work excellently..

I am using a push. And yes, unfortunately it does mean that the drum rack pads don't light up as activive and if i'm sequencing it doesn't show up as it normally would. It only shows the 1 initial rack chain input. This would be an amazing thing to be able to have, but i can't see how you would get it to recognise the individual chains...

Not a real problem because i'm wanting it for live performance. So does a grand job for me. Means i can now bash premade chords and manipulate a synth a as a drum rack, Thanks guys, been a great help.

So each pad will be lit up and have a dummy chain, but with one chain receiving all notes. On this chain you have a midi effect rack which splits again into (in this case) 16 chains, each separated by key to trigger when the relevant pad is struck - You hit C1 it goes through all notes and then split again by the key selection in the midi rack.

On each of these midi chains there is a midi pitch and midi chord. You press C1 on the drum pad it will play a C1 but you can change that root note with the midi pitch, and then create a chord with the midi Chord.

At the end of all of this there is a single instrument rack you can fill with whatever you want. For any additional control on the synth, you will have to set up macros at the the first instance in the drum rack and turn off auto select.

Thank you!!! This rack is the perfect solution for somebody *cough* who's not confident in their ability to nail the chords just right every time onstage, but still wants to have some freedom to improvise with chord choices in the moment.